


Hats & Heads

by queenklu



Category: due South
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hair, M/M, it's been 80 long years as the saying goes, jfc i don't know what to tag this fic as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 21:49:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10475166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: Ray missed a lot of things on their adventure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa this isn't what I'm supposed to be working on!!!!
> 
> Major thanks to tombolguid for the beta, this wouldn't have been half as good without her calling me out <33

Ray missed a lot of things on their adventure. He missed pizza and pancakes and beer, yeah, but even more than that he missed food that had never once been dehydrated. Whoever thought, ' _You know what would make a great flavor? Mummification_ ' could meet the business end of Ray’s boot.

He missed sleeping naked--hell, he missed not sleeping in a goddamn _hat_. He missed sitting on a couch instead of a bucket of sled tools. He missed his car. He missed seeing his own knees.

Things people just take for granted all the time: knees. Sometimes in the morning when it was so cold in the tent he slept stiff, he'd wake up and rub his knees, mutter apologies and hellos through the fabric of his insulated pants. “How ya doin, buddies?” he'd say, and stretch and ignore Fraser's tilted head.

Ray wasn't gonna tell Fraser he couldn't hack it because he missed his _knees_.

There was a lot to not-miss up here too, was the thing, moments he hoarded up like old polaroid pictures he’d need in Chicago, keep safe in his wallet between thin sheets of plastic. Moments like:

The way inside the tent seemed lighter than outside at night, bright orange fabric of the ceiling reflecting same as the snow, making the shadows stand out sharp, stark. It was only when he tried to squint that he realized the details were muddy: bootstraps tied together but not what color, eyelashes on Fraser's cheek but not how many.

The way some dogs weren't for making friends with, just like some guys in the gym are up for a friendly round of boxing and others are just there to pound the bag. Denali was one of the fun dogs, and Dief, though he was hardly a dog at all. Yukon, the lead dog Fraser’d borrowed for Ray’s sled, could give two flying fucks about the humans she was dragging as long as they left out food and water and let her do her job and _run._

The way the northern lights were _BULLSHIT_ with a capital B and all the letters that came after, because they did not make any kind of sense in the known world. Fraser could talk science until he was blue in the face, nothing was going to convince Ray’s brain that there was an explanation for these twisting green ribbons of light in the sky. It hurt to look at them, cracked something important in his chest, left him gaping. They moved so fast, sometimes, stretched forever and flickered out; then other times they’d bleed in so quiet Ray’d catch himself staring for ten minutes before realizing he wasn’t imagining that faint lightening in the sky.

The way Fraser told stories at night but only sang songs in the morning.

The way Fraser wore two hats, one a thinner beanie-type he kept on every second of the day, and a bigger furry one he wore when it was colder, which was only 90% the time.

The way Fraser always took the first sip of his tea when it was too hot and flinched, no matter how Ray tried to warn him.

The way Fraser stayed in his sight, always always always, and if he wasn't--couldn’t be--it made Ray ansty like the world was gonna open up and swallow him again, only this time all alone.

Going back to Chicago was going to suck, in a huge unnameable way. They probably hadn’t yet invented words for it. Like looking at the goddamn northern lights.

So that's why when he was missing his pizza and his knees he could stuff that shit down. Focus on the photos. Be grateful that he’d even had a buddy like this when the goings were slim. Somehow he’d been fine before Fraser, somehow he was going to have to be fine without him.

And it _was_ all fine, until the morning Ray woke up and felt like his scalp was crawling.

“Ray!”

“Wait, Fraser, I gotta,” Ray said and did it again, scooped up two armfuls of snow and dumped them onto his head, with Yukon giving him wicked side-eye over her bristling tail. “Just gimme--” He shuddered violently, a wave that shook him head to toe. “--a moment.”

“A moment of _madness?_ ” Fraser demanded, yanking Ray's hands away from his head—Ray shoved him off, fell to his knees, and shoved his entire head into the snow. “ _Ray!”_

Ray came up with a gasp that sounded half like a moan, blinking snowflakes off his eyelashes and scrubbing vigorously at his hair. “Ahh,” he said again, and ended with a high whine as snow started dripping down the back of his neck.

“Ray,” Fraser said urgently. Ray blinked and saw Fraser was on his knees too, Fraser was taking Ray's beard-scruffy face in his mittened hands and staring at him with wide, worried eyes.

“'m okay, Frase,” Ray told him, and shook himself like a dog. Well, like a Denali-type dog, with graceless limbs and a head that flops to one side. “I just,” he said, and Fraser scrubbed a bit of snow from his eyebrow before it could start dripping down his face, “I needed to wash my hair.”

“...Oh,” said Fraser.

Another thing Ray would miss: the way it was easier to just _be_ out in the tundra. He could tell that part of his brain constantly shouting 'WHAT'S THIS LOOK LIKE ON THE OUTSIDE' to go hell—there was no “outside,” not one single living person who could look at Ray and Fraser and wonder if their behavior was on the level. There was no level! Fraser's weirdness didn't need to be explained to nobody. Ray's straightness or lack thereof wasn't ever on trial. It was just them and the dogs, and the dogs didn't give a shit.

Because this? Fraser holding his face like he was the heroine from the trashy romance novel Franny stuffed in Ray's carry-on? Might seem a little gay. Ray might've, back in Chicago, had to shove Fraser off and puff up his chest and hit on some girls from accounting, even though they were all tired of his too-loud advances. The reputation he had to uphold as Ray Vecchio and a hardboiled detective of the Chicago PD and a red-blooded American guy meant about as much as one more snowflake in the tundra. It was nice to just...let Fraser do his thing.

Which was apparently fuss over him, after the shock wore off. He stuck his tongue out by that one canine of his that always looked extra sharp, brows drawn together in a dark line as he dragged his mittens over Ray's hair.

Fraser's beard, of course, made him look like a lumberjack. A lumberjack who maybe got left in the freezer a little too long, from the way frost always clung around his mouth—Ray's mouth too, something about breathing/condensation/freezing points/blah--but it always showed his smile. The frosty muzzle leant Fraser another level of distinction; Ray probably looked like he’d tried to eat a giant powdered doughnut with no hands.

“There are other ways to get clean, Ray,” Fraser said after a pause, probably 'cause he was concentrating so hard. Ray didn't mind. He’d half forgotten what they were talking about; Fraser's hands felt good, even through all the layers of cloth and the inch or so of bristly hair. Almost like Fraser was scrubbing him down with a towel, and a squirrel.

“None that would’ve come soon enough,” Ray said, and finally started to shiver.

Fraser only frowned harder, like Ray had listened to all those lectures about how important it was to stay warm and thought 'nahhhh, what's a little freezing to death between friends.'

“It had to happen,” Ray said, cutting off the lecture reprise at the knees. “My hair was gross. I'm gross. It was either this or rip my entire head off.”

“Where's your hat?” Fraser asked.

Ray pulled it reluctantly from his pocket. It was almost as grimy as his hair had been.

“Here,” Fraser said and turned it inside-out. “It isn’t ideal, but it will help air out the inside while keeping your head warm.”

Ray sat back on his haunches, a little. He wasn't sure what to call the feeling bubbling up in his gut, bigger than a hat could hold. Last night's pemmican, probably.

Fraser hesitated, then reached out and put the hat on Ray's head, tugging it down over the tips of his ears. Ray blinked. He hadn't been angling for that, he was sure, and yet.

But nobody had to think about that on the tundra.

Fraser stood quickly, offered one of those mitten-hands to lever Ray up on his feet, which he took. “Remind me when we stop for the night,” Fraser said, already turning away, “I'll dig out one of the spares.”

“We have spare hats?” Ray blurted before he could think it through; of course they did, Fraser knew what he was doing. They probably had an extra dog stashed somewhere.

“Certainly, Ray,” Fraser assured him lightly, though he kept his back turned, and his shoulders a little high. “Though naturally we could skin a rabbit or two to make one if you’d prefer.”

Ray squinted at him. He knew Fraser was kidding. Mostly kidding. Weird, that the joke hadn't landed the way Ray felt it should've, even though he was the only one around to laugh.

“Er,” Fraser said, glancing at him sideways, “we really do have extra hats.”

“Something up with you, Fraser?” Ray asked, still squinting. The sun was low because it was always low, when it could actually be bothered to drag its ass above the horizon line—but now it was hovering right behind Fraser's head, turning him to stinging silhouette. With his big coat, big beard, blurry-furry hat, Fraser looked...

Ray's head felt chilled, and his neck, and the collar of his jacket. The rest of him, for a split second, felt frozen fucking solid.

He missed Fraser's hair.

He missed seeing Fraser's _hair._

With a longing that felt like the dogs howling at the goddamn northern lights, with Fraser standing not three feet from him, Ray had a realization. It wasn’t knees at all that broke him.

“Fraser,” he said. “I need to go home.”

~*~

Easier said than trucking a couple hundred miles to the next sign of civilization, it turned out. Especially with Fraser dead quiet and Yukon glaring like she'd always known he was weak. Dief kept almost tripping because he looked over his shoulder so many times, which pissed off Yukon, which made Denali jittery, and all told they moved about half as fast as they had been. Ray wanted to ask Fraser if there was something he could do, but Fraser kept pasting this look on his face like everything was fine, and hell, maybe under the beard it actually was.

But _Fraser_ hadn’t just realized he was neck-deep in something more than buddy-feelings for his best friend. Fraser wasn’t locked inside a broken pinball machine of a head, full of sirens and flashing lights spelling out ‘YOU FUCKED UP. YOU FUCKED UP.’

Things, on Ray’s end, were not fine.

Who the hell had Ray been _kidding_? Hand of Franklin. Grand adventure. Like the Great North would also have the answer for the case of gangrene in Ray’s gut, the sickness that got him when Fraser stared at all this white and said “I'm home” and suddenly looked like a whole person. Until that moment, somehow Ray had thought he wasn’t the only wonky puzzle piece in this partnership. He hadn't realized Fraser was something else all along, like a Lego.

And now here Ray was, several months too late, realizing why he got sick in the first place. _Fuck._

He needed to get back to civilization. Back to a place where things made sense, where having feelings for his best friend was i-m-possible. Where he was going to miss Fraser like a _buddy_ and survive, and not like a broken fucking heart.

At fifty miles Ray opened his mouth. Fraser's gaze lit with the intensity of someone about to play badminton with a live grenade. Ray closed his mouth again.

The first Ray's brain started processing the extra noise, he thought it was a plane. But the skies stayed clear, and the _hushhhh_ of the runners on clean snow softened the edges of the low rumble, until the scattering of shrub turned to trees turned to a thick forest, and out of the bristly pines popped a small house. Cabin. What made a house a cabin? Ray wanted to ask, but as they slowed to a stop somehow that question wasn't the one that came to mind.

A large man paused throwing hunks of frozen meat in the woodchipper on his lawn to look at them for a while. The meat was funneled directly into a large plastic trash can labeled ‘BEEF.’

“Uhhhh,” said Ray. “Fraser?”

“Hello!” Fraser called, which was the first time in four days Ray had heard him say anything other than, “Better get on our way” or “Better bed down for the night.” Fraser continued, “Sorry to bother you, is there a phone about?”

“Are we calling the Canadian cops?” Ray started to ask, but then, wait, was Fraser the Canadian cops? Had any of that been straightened out before they just--left? Did it matter in the face of this whole conduct-unbecoming-a-woodchipper deal going down?

“Mabel took it,” the man said, turning off the machine. His beard was twice as big as Fraser's; presumably he'd been out here at least twice as long. “She's off hunting, needs the satellite phone in case she runs into trouble.”

“Oh,” said Fraser. “Any idea as to when she'll be back?”

“Nope,” he replied, and motioned to the trash can. “Your dogs hungry?”

Now that he mentioned dogs Ray could tune his hearing to the yips and barks that weren't coming from their teams—round the back of this guy’s cabin Ray spotted fences and small huts for dogs, and a few white-muzzled faces peering out from the straw.

“That explains the woodchipper?” Ray said, mostly hopeful. Fraser—well, Ray thought he caught a look of embarrassment on Ray's behalf. Of _course_ Ray should've known sled dogs like their beef chipped. Naturally.

“We're well rationed,” Fraser said, “no need to go to any trouble.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, and turned the machine back on with a puff of gas.

Fraser was about to turn and leave, which stung at Ray like walking out on a prime witness when they'd only dished you half the dirt. “Wait a second, wait a second,” Ray said, plowing forward into the snow, even though he sank up to his knees. “Excuse me, sir!” The woodchipper puttered to a stop. “Know any place to stay around here? With four walls and maybe a stove?”

“Could take Mabel's place,” the man said after a slight rumble. “She don't mind when folks stop in. Sets her house up for it, case someone gets lost.”

“We're folks,” Ray said, “but he's Canadian, so we're not lost.”

This guy studied Fraser beyond the black bush of his beard, and Ray wondered if Canada would swallow Fraser up like that, let him hide in all that fur.

“S'pose that'd still be alright,” he said finally. Ray only noticed Fraser's reaction when there wasn't one, when he stayed stiff and silent like they'd never found another human being out here at all. “Mabel's place is three miles north. Look for the rooster, you can't miss it.”

“Thank you kindly,” Ray said when Fraser didn't, and then Fraser opened his mouth like he realized he'd been incredibly rude, but couldn't say the same thing again and draw more attention to his rudeness, and Ray grabbed him by the elbow and lead him back to the sleds before his brain could start sparking.

“Ray,” Fraser finally said, and Ray didn’t slow down, but he didn’t say nothing either. Fraser had plenty of time to finish the thought.

They had to part ways a little, because Ray’s sled was parked some ten feet behind Fraser’s. He looked up at the break, met Fraser’s eyes. Or tried to--Fraser was futzing with his gloves.

The woodchipper started up again.

“He’ll add the beef to their kibble,” Fraser said, clearing his throat. “Along with vitamins essential for working sled dogs. Our kibble has a similar mix, though I believe the added protein comes from fish.”

It was the longest thing Fraser had said to him in four days, and still managed to say nothing at all.

Ray said, “Rooster, Fraser, let's go get warm,” and turned to go.

~*~

The rooster, it turned out, was about six feet tall and made out of Folger's coffee tins. It stared at them cockeyed with its aluminum pie plates and parted beak of old shovel heads. At some point it had been spray-painted yellow and red. The snow made it look like it was nesting—for all Ray knew, it was.

Fraser parked the dogs by hooking his ice brake in the snow and telling Yukon to sit—she did, but only with the air of doing someone a massive favor—and hiked up the snowy steps to check the door. It was, as promised, latched to keep the weather out but unlocked. Ray started staking out the dogs, Denali close enough to Yukon that he wouldn't hurt himself looking dumb for her, but not so close that she'd eat him.

“Hey,” Ray said, trying to put some sound in the air that wasn’t jingling harnesses or snuffling dogs. Fraser didn’t pause in scooping out their kibble into the paper bowls they reused every morning and night, each dog’s name printed in Fraser’s neat handwriting along the rim. “Hey, d’you think Yukon could ever be a house dog?”

Yukon sneezed. Or snorted. Dealing with Dief made Ray forget what dogs could or couldn’t understand.

“I don’t think she’d adapt very well, Ray,” Fraser said after setting down two more bowls—Olly’s and Miss Piggy’s—and starting on a third.

“But Denali,” Ray said, pulse kicking up a notch for no other reason he could pin down than he didn’t want to walk into a house where Fraser wasn’t talking to him. “That dog, I mean. He’s got that run, run, run thing down, but. Don’t you think he could learn to love a house?”

Fraser pounded down the lid on their bucket full of kibble, not even looking his direction. “He’s never been inside, Ray,” he said, and got to work unstrapping their supplies.

“...Right,” Ray nodded, and tried his best to help.

Dief kept bouncing between Fraser and Ray as they worked, whining softly to Fraser, who ignored him, and Ray, who didn't speak dog. Wolf. Wolf-dog. When Fraser finished checking the cabin and grabbed their things, Dief deliberately planted his ass on the front stoop and wouldn't budge.

It was hard to see Fraser's eyes—Fraser's anything. If there was a telling note in his voice when he said, “Suit yourself,” the snow ate it right out of the air.

Dief's head flopped backward to look at Ray as the door swung shut. “Yeah,” Ray said, and heard his own voice crack like frost, “I know.” At least Dief followed him in.

The cabin was dark inside, but cozy, clean. Fraser was already hard at work on a fire in the woodstove kitty-corner to the door, next to a mismatched couch and chair covered in dog hair. Ray looked for a bed and had to look up: a permanent ladder lead to the loft, which was just big enough for a mattress wedged between the A-frame of the roof. A small mountain of blankets were piled on top, thin ones, thick ones, fleece ones, wool ones, and a gray pelt of some kind sprawled over the foot of the bed.

“That's not gonna be Dief's brother up there, is it?” Ray said, pointing.

“Hardly,” Fraser said, shaking his head. “It's caribou.”

“Caribou like reindeer like Rudolph,” Ray parroted from the start of their trip when Fraser was teaching him about tundra critters. His tongue caught up with his brain as he looked at the fur, laying there like a deflated balloon. “Oh,” Ray said.

“I'll take the--” Fraser started to say, and finished with, “...chair,” and a glare at Dief sprawled across the couch, closest to the stove.

“Don't be dumb, the bed's big enough for two plus a caribou.” Ray unslung his pack and stretched the kinks in his back so he wouldn't have to look at Fraser's face. The mattress was bigger than their entire tent; it wasn’t going to be any different, _any_ different, just because it was a bed. If Ray didn’t think about it then Fraser wouldn’t think he was thinking about it and none would be the wiser, N-U-N none. “Gonna hit the great outdoors real quick...”

“There's no need, Ray.”

“Uh, there is a mighty need, Fraser,” he objected. “Wait, you mean she's got an outhouse?”

“No, I mean she has indoor plumbing,” Fraser said, opening a tiny door off the kitchen. Ray felt his jaw drop.

He rubbed his eyes.

Fraser looked alarmed and did a double take at the door, like maybe he was worried his little Houdini trick _hadn't_ opened on a real goddamn porcelain toilet and a real goddamn sink and a jesus fucking christ--

“Is that a _shower?”_

Ray wasn't proud of how his voice broke. But he also didn't care.

“Yes,” Fraser said, turning himself away. “Surely you saw the water tank on the side of the house.”

“No, the giant chicken kinda pulled my focus,” Ray said, and maybe he was choked up, maybe his skin had started to crawl with the promise of being clean, maybe he wanted to rip Fraser's stupid hat from his head and kiss him.

But that was crazy talk. That was talk that'd turn Fraser's cold shoulder into a block of actual ice.

“Fraser,” Ray wanted to say, “maybe I don't need to go home right now. Maybe all I need is a break. Maybe all I need is a _shower._ ” But he couldn't do that to the guy. Couldn't give him that hope if it turned out he was wrong.

“Go ahead, Ray,” Fraser said, and buried himself up to the armpit in one of his packs, digging for something in the bottom.

Ray went. Before he shut the door, Dief gave a low wuffing groan, probably at Ray's cowardice. He didn't wait to see if Fraser agreed.

~*~

Man, but the shower was _good._ Parts of Ray woke up he hadn't even realized had gone into hibernation—and not even the nether parts, either, though his gave an alarmed twitch at the first shock of hot water. His toes woke up, and ached fiercely, and then _stopped_ aching, which was a hurt he hadn't known he'd been ignoring. His joints woke up, his elbows, knees. Every hair follicle felt alive and tingling and new with Mable's no-nonsense head-and-shoulders shampoo. His nails felt clean. His eyelids. His lungs.

When he finally stepped out of the shower—no more than fifteen minutes, he'd timed it, and he didn't want Fraser to be left in the cold—Ray felt like a whole brand new person, scraped raw and shiny. Like maybe he’d finally sloughed off the last dead cells of Vecchio’s skin and washed them down the drain. His reflection in the mirror showed more ropey muscle, still too skinny but not malnourished, and his beard--

His beard was a nightmare. “What the fuck is that,” he demanded of the mirror, jabbing a finger at it. That wasn't any face he knew.

Mabel had scissors in a basket on the toilet, and a four-blade razor unopened under her sink. Ray added that to the tally of cash he was gonna leave when they left, as well as a couple more bucks for the extra conditioner he slathered on his face after he'd trimmed the worst of it off into the trash. Boy, it was slow going, and he almost gave up halfway through if it wouldn't've meant he'd look even uglier than before.

Slowly something like his own face emerged. There was the dumb scar on his chin from getting cold-clocked by a thug in his first week of being a cop. There was his upper lip, and his lower, though there was something strange about them. He tried a couple exercises from undercover training until he figured it out—he was used to, well, sneering. Out in the arctic, there was nothing to sneer about. His sneering muscles had atrophied.

He rubbed a towel over his face, comparing the paleness of his chin to the ruddy wind-burn high on his cheeks. It didn't look ridiculous. Actually, all in all, he just looked kind of...happy.

Ray took the scissors to his hair, too, taking some of the raggedy edges off. Still happy. What the hell.

His old clothes were ripe enough to get up and walk on their own, so Ray kicked them into a ball, used them to mop the last of his stray hairs off the sink and into the trash. God, Mabel was gonna think some small animal died in here.

At that point, though, it was clear he was going to have to make a run for it—out of the lingering steam of the bathroom and into the frigid cabin wrapped in nothing but a towel, grab some clothes, scramble into them, and feel every part of his nice warm body crawl back into hibernation. F—

“Ray?” A knock on the door. “I took the liberty of collecting fresh clothes for you.”

Jesus, he could _kiss_ _Fraser_.

...So.

He hadn't just needed a shower.

“Thanks,” Ray said and stuck his hand out of the door. Fraser pressed the clothes into his palm without their fingers touching; Ray wasn't sure why he expected it.

What he really hadn't expected was opening the door fully dressed, and watching Fraser clock his new haircut with a look like the goddamn northern lights had reached down out of the sky and slapped him across the face.

“Hey,” Ray said, scratching at the back of his neck where it was still a little too long in parts. “Uh.”

“There's ravioli on the stove,” Fraser said, and slid past him into the bathroom. Ray noticed only when the door shut that Fraser's own pile of clothes had been left behind.

“Great,” Ray muttered to himself, scrubbing his hands over his newly bare cheeks. Way to make a guy think you couldn't wait to get outta here—scraping all evidence of their adventure off his face.

Dief mumbled something that sounded like unflattering agreement, then rolled his eyes and went to sleep. Lucky guy, he didn't have to hear any of Ray's bullshit; all he had to do was shut his eyes.

The shower turned on. Ray went to the stove to eat some canned ravioli, which made his withered tastebuds sing.

~*~

Fraser was in the shower a long time. Long enough for Ray to throw more wood on the fire and climb the ladder, burrowing into a mountain of blankets. The caribou skin was missing the head and legs, but he pet it for a while, shocked at the thickness of the strands, the tough, almost bristly feel to it. Here was a creature built for this place. Not a dumb Polack who got lost looking for a dead guy's hand.

When Fraser did come out he had a towel covering his head and face, roughly scrubbing it over his hair. He had another towel slung around his hips, and almost tripped over the pile of clothes Ray had left for him closer to the door. Fraser picked them up and went back into the bathroom, and Ray said nothing, and barely blinked, and never saw Fraser's features.

“Get a grip on yourself,” he growled under his breath and pulled the blankets up to his nose, but couldn't make his stupid heart stop rabbiting around in his chest. He'd seen rabbits now, real rabbits, and the way a pile of snow would suddenly leap up and take off into the brush was exactly how his ticker felt—flighty and frightened and hard to pin down.

Was Fraser gonna come out without his beard? Didn’t matter! Maybe Fraser would shave off his eyebrows and give himself a mohawk. Who cared! No one in this cabin. Well, maybe Dief.

Fraser left the bathroom. He had sweats on over his spare pair of red longjohns, and black wooly socks. A white cable-knit sweater Ray had seen before, but he couldn't place where, hung low on his arms. And a blue knit cap pulled tight over his head.

Something sank hard and heavy in Ray's stomach, even though—Fraser tipped his head up—Fraser's beard was gone. God, he looked small. And strange. And sad.

“Still want me to come up, Ray?” Fraser said softly, and Ray called back, “Yeah, Frase,” because. _Always._

That wasn’t new. How many times had he bullied Fraser into staying too late at his apartment, until it only made sense to spend the night? How many dinners out, or movies, or times spent shooting shit at the bar--or Ray shooting shit and Fraser sipping at a glass of something non-alcoholic like milk or juice, but smiling at Ray all the same. Sometimes, Fraser’s hair would get a little soft-looking, fall down on his forehead, and Fraser would be too busy smiling to fix it right away. Ray shouldn’t be so surprised to realize he had a couple hundred snapshots of that in his memory bank, enough for a fucking flipbook.

He was supposed to be a detective, for _Christ’s sake._

It took Fraser a million years and half a second all at once to climb the ladder. Ray had to watch that blue cap bob up, pulled down tight over his ears. The only hair peeking out was at the nape of his neck. Ray wanted to cry.

“Ray?” Fraser asked at the top.

He diligently scooched over, dragging the caribou hide with him.

Had Fraser's eyes always been that blue? Or was it the stupid _hat?_ Ray glared the pattern in the yarn because it meant he didn't have to look at Fraser's bare face. Much.

He looked different than the Fraser he'd been holding in his head, somehow. Like waking up after a dream and realizing your ma never had Dolly Parton hair. Surely Fraser's jawline was more stubborn. Those lines around his eyes were just windburn.

Fraser crawled beneath the covers and tried to turn his back instantly.

“Hey,” Ray said, unaware the word was gonna bust out until it did.

Fraser obligingly turned back over. But it was an obligation. “Ray?”

God, he was stupid, and old. He felt old, but in that helpless way of being eighteen and everyone expecting him to keep track of bills and not put Dawn in the dishwasher and just _know_ instinctively the process of filing taxes.

“Feels strange, huh?” Ray said instead. “Bare face.”

Fraser tipped his head down toward the covers; or, and Ray couldn't tell, he rubbed his cheek on the pillow. “Yes.”

“Not bad strange, right?” Ray pressed. In for a fuckin' fifty pound bag of sled dog kibble. “Just different.”

This time Fraser really did pull the blankets closer to his face. His eyes were shuttered, or the cabin was dark. No tent to reflect the snow in here. “Yes.”

“Like when you first came to Chicago? Or was that different and worse?”

Fraser was silent for a while. “Ray...”

This was all wrong. He was messing it up, he was losing Fraser and Fraser was less than a foot away from him. _Christ_ how was he gonna hang onto Fraser when they were a thousand miles apart?

He wasn't. He knew that. He'd known.

“You didn't have to shave,” Ray blurted out. His fist was so tight in the caribou pelt he could feel each bristly hair. “I know you're gonna—you're gonna need it. Up here. To keep warm.”

“It'll grow back, Ray,” Fraser said, very small.

Ray realized he was gearing up for a freak out, one of those times where he'd spin himself in circles and hope Fraser could untangle him before he choked on his own harness, like one of the dogs. But Fraser wasn't going to be around to get him out of his own head forever. Hell, Fraser wasn't going to be around to do anything for him in less than a _month._ Maybe even less than a week.

Fraser tugged at the edges of his hat, pulling it down almost to his eyebrows. “Change isn't always bad.”

“Like when you moved to Chicago?” Ray said again before he could stop himself, something awful bubbling in his gut. What if Fraser said no? What if Fraser said _yes?_ “Like,” he hurried on, “you'll stay out here, meet somebody—some _buddy_ —and it'll be good, and maybe in a couple-a years someone will switch him out with some dumb Polack and you'll be stuck with him instead.” He tried to smile. This was supposed to be a joke.

Fraser tried to smile too. It didn't feel like a joke.

The cabin was quiet and covered in snow, and Ray's body still ached with the places it was warming up, sharing this bed with Fraser. His hand curled around a scrunch of fabric, and his littlest finger caught on the edge of Fraser's sweater.

“Sorry,” Ray said, pulling away with a fragile jolt that made him realize he'd forgotten what his hands looked like without mittens. “Sorry.”

Fraser shifted onto his back, eyes locked onto the ceiling not-so-far above them. His lips parted, tongue darting out to touch that one sharp canine and retreat. “It's quite alright, Ray,” Fraser mustered, exactly as loud as the spruce logs crackling below.

Deep breath, even though his lungs were lead. “Fraser?”

“Hm?”

The trick was not to think about what he was saying before he said it. If he came at it sideways, if he tackled it into the snow, then he and Fraser were back on that tundra, nowhere and no one to judge. “I gotta ask you something.” His mouth felt dry; he licked his lips. “You ever gotta ask a question, and you know it's gonna sound queer but you gotta?”

Fraser's gaze locked on him, hard. No. Of course Fraser never had queer questions. Fraser's thoughts were as pure as the driven snow. Undriven snow? Chicago streets sure looked less pure once cars and trucks had driven in it.

Shit. Ray could feel himself going chicken like the big red rooster on the lawn.

“Ray?”

“Forget it,” Ray say, dimly surprised that his voice didn't crack. Sick hot shame bled up from his neck, burning in his ears. All he could hear was the silence of the last four days. How bad it'd be tonight. How much worse it'd be tomorrow.

And every day after that, on and on and on.

“You said--” In all that silence Ray heard a soft noise and realized it was Fraser swallowing. “You said you had to ask.”

 _Fuck._ Was that _hope_ ? Ray's insides twisted and writhed—that meant there was a question Fraser was hoping _for_. Set the whole frozen tundra on fire, this sure as hell wasn't it.

Deep breath in. Sideways, sideways, sideways.

“Can I see your hair?”

Ray shut his eyes tight, aiming for blackness but looking at stars. Well fuck that; why look at stars when he could look at Fraser?

Fraser’s eyes were wider than he had ever seen them.

Quiet, almost a crackle of burning timber by itself: “Ray?”

A chill caught at the damp of Ray’s nape and sent a shiver rolling down his spine, burrowing down into the blankets. But it felt like a good shiver, a being-alive shiver, a stick-your-head-in-a-snowbank-to-get-clean kind of shiver. “Call it a...an instinct.”

Fraser didn't move a muscle, except to shut his own eyes.

Nothing, and nothing, heartbeat after heartbeat. Too rigid to be faking sleep. Ray didn't think he was trying.

Slow...so slow he felt like a glacier, Ray moved closer. Careful to shift the blankets, the bed, so Fraser would know where he was. He reached out. He touched the edge of Fraser's cap.

All the air rushed out of Fraser in a breath. No other words for it: Fraser _caved_ under his hand, like the ice giving way under their feet. Ray's elbow, propping him up, gave an alarming wobble. And that gut feeling lit up like gangbusters, like fireworks, like goddamn northern lights across the sky.

“Okay?” Ray said, giving Fraser's hat the lightest of tugs.

Fraser nodded, fingers curling into his pillow.

Ray pulled.

The hat came away easy, just a scrap of cloth after all. Cabin-filtered twilight did something strange to Fraser's hair, illuminated the locks on his forehead in silver and white, dashed across his temples. For a moment Ray couldn't figure why the lights in his chest didn't stop dancing. And then—

“Fraser,” he said, and dropped the hat to touch, stroke his fingertips so lightly through that silver gilding. He felt electrified, dizzy. “ _Fraser—_ ”

“I've been...going gray...since I was twenty,” Fraser said, in so many fits and starts that it almost distracted from the way his whole body trembled. Some muddled part of Ray noticed that these didn’t look like the good shakes at all. “I was quite careful to keep it hidden—”

“ _Why?”_ Ray blurted, captivated by the fine strands slipping through his fingertips.

Fraser’s eyes blinked open.

Ray knew how close they were. The line of Fraser’s arm was flush against his side and hip. He just didn’t know how to want to move away.

“Vanity,” Fraser said, barely a breath of air.

“You look good, Frase,” Ray said, just as too-quiet and too-honest. “You look real good.”

Fraser looked right at him, eyes an endless, impossible blue. “Fear,” he said, and didn’t sound afraid.

Ray opened his mouth, and shut it, and said, “Of what?” in a horrible, cracked voice, and then, “That someone’s gonna—” and Fraser kissed him.

Fraser tasted like clean snow, like warm fires, like long days and cold nights of wanting-waiting-needing something that didn’t have words. Ray felt a moan punch out of him, licked into Fraser’s mouth to chase the answering noise, the rumble building low and shivering in Fraser’s chest. His hands clutched at Fraser’s hair too tight, live-wire awareness of how close to the edge they were in this tiny loft bed zinging through his skin, feeling like every inch of him was scraped raw.

He stopped to breathe, just half a breath, and raked his attention over Fraser--from the way his fingers were holding Ray just as tight, to the hectic puff of air against his lips, the way Fraser had hooked his ankles over Ray’s legs like an ice brake in the snow.

“You were afraid of me?” Ray found himself murmuring, a heartbeat away from Fraser’s mouth.

“Ray,” Fraser said, breath hitching when their lips brushed together with the movement. “I…” He tucked his chin in, and Ray reluctantly gathered his scattered-penny thoughts enough to pull back a half inch, then two, before Fraser’s grip locked on him again. He licked his bottom lip, and Ray’s thoughts were worthless, who needed ‘em, no one used coins nowadays--

“It’s easy,” Fraser said, though it sounded like anything but, “to forget, out here. How important the world is.”

Well. Yeah.

 _But_.

Mabel had a chicken sculpture on her lawn. Her neighbor threw hunks of meat in a woodchipper. When things got a little queer out here, the world also...didn’t….end.

“You frighten me, Ray,” Fraser said before Ray could do more than open his mouth, and gave him a microscopic shake. “You frighten me very much.”

Some part of Ray knew that already, like he knew he had ten fingers and two knees. Otherwise he wouldn’t’ve asked. That wasn’t the part of him that was howling: Fraser wasn’t scared, Fraser never flinched and he never lied, Fraser was Perfect with a capital _P_ and Ray was the fuck up, Ray was the ragged cardboard puzzle piece and Fraser was the Lego, only, only only only.

Only, there was silver in Fraser’s hair.

Ray took Fraser’s face in his hands, the hands he was used to beating bloody to keep people from noticing they were kinda delicate-looking but now were kind of shaking, and he kissed Fraser: once on his forehead, and twice at each temple, where his hair was going silver-grey. Fraser gasped real quiet, ribs expanding under Ray’s. Ray kissed his eyelashes next, as gentle as he knew how.

“I’m sorry,” he said, more vibrations than words.

Always contrary, Fraser started getting tense again. “Ray--”

“Listen,” Ray said, and Fraser went quiet, like there was anything to hear in the fat white flakes falling from the sky, or the warmth of a fire burning low. All Ray could hear was the sound of their breathing in tempo, and Dief’s quiet snores.

Ray met Fraser’s eyes. Fraser held them, steady and true.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said again. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Frase. You scare me too. But not like that,” he said, reaching out when Fraser’s eyes started to flicker to rest his thumb against those fine lines in the corner. “Not in a big-wide-world way.”

“Then how?” Fraser asked, brow furrowing.

“You, Fraser…” He sighed, reaching for the best way inside him to explain, only to have the answer leap to the tip of his tongue. “You scare me like the goddamn northern lights.”

The startled laugh from Fraser was the second sweetest thing he’d tasted in this bed of a thousand blankets, and only by the slimmest margin, and only because it was still tinged with something bittersweet.

“You’re impossible, im-fuckin’-possible, buddy, in all the ways to say it,” Ray said, chasing that smile to turn it all the way real. “Science can’t explain you--nope, you’re wrong, lalala,” he added to cover Fraser’s halfhearted protests. “You belong here, in the north. It’s in the name. They’re not called the Chicagoan Lights.” He waited for Fraser to protest that, and it felt strangely like a win when Fraser didn’t.

“And even though my eyes twist up trying to make sense of you,” Ray said, stopping Fraser’s wince with a thumb along his jaw, “I don’t ever want to look away.”

Fraser hitched in a breath, and it wasn’t until he felt Fraser’s knuckles touch his cheek that Ray realized he’d instinctively let his gaze drop to someplace safer than his eyes; a lifetime of Stella brushing off his sentimental outbursts had trained him to expect an eyeroll, or a scoff. Fraser did neither. Fraser looked at him with the same wide-eyed blinking that Ray recognized from staring and staring at the night sky and trying to wrap his brain around the fact that it was on fire.

This kiss was better, both more frantic and more sure, Fraser surging up beneath him to roll him on his back, further away from the edge. Ray’s whole body tingled, creaky muscles shuddering with a release of tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding until Fraser had him pinned. God, he ached like he’d been running for the pure joy of it. Hot mouths and teeth, hands roving over ribs to feel the other breathe, the sheer weight of Fraser quieting the feeling that he was about to vibrate out of his skin.

Ray liked the way Fraser felt over him just as much as he’d like being over Fraser, like interlocking gears that fit the same way backwards as forwards. Ray had always been a switch-hitter; something told him Fraser was _similarly inclined_ \--the Fraser who lived in his head helpfully supplied--that Fraser might need to be taken apart just as often as he needed to do the taking. Man, that’d take several go-rounds to test that hypotenuse. Hippocampus. H’apostrophe.

“Fraser, what’s it called when you got a theory and you want to try it out?” Ray asked between gasps as Fraser traced the faint ridges of his ribs, dancing between tickling and unbearably hot. “H-hip-hep-hippo--”

“Hypothesis,” Fraser said, lifting his mouth from Ray’s skin, which was a crime.

And Ray meant to tell him about his theory, he really did. But he opened his mouth, and out came, “I love you.” And then, because he was a coward, and Fraser was looking at him like he was something wholly new: “That’s my theory. That I love you. And I’d like to test my hy—”

Fraser kissed him again, the kind of kiss that crashed like a wave and kept tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. Ray tasted salt and felt his cheeks go wet; impossible to say if they were his tears or Fraser’s, they were up so high in this tiny, inconsequential bed in the middle of the snow, and trees, and Folgers cans, as Fraser whispered it back in a hundred thousand ways.

Ray had had a lot of sex in his day, though not in a while, a long while; this felt somehow better than every orgasm he’d ever had. He could tell Fraser was holding him because he loved him, and nothing else. Fuck, it felt like there were fifty different layers of clothing and at least a hundred buttons in between them, and he’d never felt closer to another heartbeat in his life. Ray was flayed wide open, and somehow also bundled up tight; it was pure, bone-deep contentment as the snow kept on falling, every part of Fraser’s body asking a question and every part of Ray’s giving an answer.

“Stay,” Fraser’s mouth said, the sound already ringing in Ray’s ears.

“Yes,” Ray said, distantly surprised to hear the word out loud, “yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

~*~

Ray woke up slowly, out of maybe the deepest sleep he’d ever had, and almost rolled off a ten foot drop.

But he didn’t. Somehow during the night Fraser had wound up on the side closest to the wall, curled chest-to-chest, but he kept his arms locked so tight around Ray that Ray might’ve suspected him of being a harness in another life. Or just scared Ray might change his mind and leave.

This guy. Ray started to swallow a surge of fondness before he realized he didn’t have to, then let it roll through his body down through the frost-bit soles of his feet. _This. Guy._ He stroked a few silvery threads of hair from Fraser’s temple because he could, and caught the _whuf_ of breath as Fraser snuffled awake.

“Morning?” Fraser mumbled.

Ray could count on one finger how many times he’d heard Fraser mumble. This was shaping up to be the best day of his entire life.

“Dunno, always too dark,” Ray whispered back, the backs of his nails slipping through Fraser’s hair just to see if he’d burrow closer. He did.

“We’d hear the dogs,” Fraser promised into the curve of his neck.

“We could have a house like this, right?” Ray asked, more curious than worried about it. If Fraser wanted to live under a rock in the ground Ray would crawl in without blinking, as long as they were together. Sap. “With indoor plumbing and a gas stove?”

“Yes,” Fraser said. Ray could feel each eyelash on his skin. Seeing in the dark was for losers. “I could build it.”

“We could build it,” Ray corrected, feeling bold. “I know stuff about more things than cars, you know.”

“Of course, Ray,” said Fraser, the amusement in his tone cut by the way his grip had tightened a second on Ray’s ribs.

“Can’t probably get hair dye up here reliably,” Ray said after a moment of just petting Fraser’s hair, and kept on petting even when Fraser’s breathing hitched. “Can’t say I’m sorry about it.”

A soft gust of air, and this time Fraser really did hold on harder, shifting his grip until it was around Ray’s waist and across his shoulderblades.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Ray told him, soothing little strokes over his nape. “I’d like you if you had green spotty hair. Or blue.”

“No,” Fraser said, so quiet Ray could barely hear him. “I want to, Ray. With you I want to be...entirely myself.”

Ray sniffled. He wasn’t proud of it, but he didn’t feel so bad as he normally did when he let a few tears out. Like when the old ladies send each other cards and jam on tv. “I get that, I do,” he promised, and squeezed Fraser back twice as tight. “It’s a metamorphosis,” Ray said, then shook his head. “No, that’s not--”

“It is,” Fraser assured him, hands coming up to touch Ray’s face. “Though maybe it’s a metaphor as well.”

Each time they kissed it felt more natural and also like driving a dog sled for the first time, with bumped knees and hearts in throats and endless miles of snow stretched out as far as the eye could see. They kissed until Ray felt gratifyingly dizzy, and then a little bit longer just to hear Fraser pant.

“I wish there was something I could give up too,” Ray said, settling down again even though he could feel some parts of them that were heading toward ‘up.’ He couldn’t explain the lack of urgency he felt, that they could take their time with this, maybe even hold off until they weren’t in a bed so high off the ground, a bed that belonged wholly to them. Maybe he was just so used to feeling the yawning terror of not being good enough that it only felt weird now it was gone, like feeling warmth flood back into frozen toes. Didn’t matter. He liked that Fraser was hard for him, and he liked that Fraser was waiting for him, and he liked that he could tell the worrying side of his brain to take a hike.

Fraser raised up on his arms to stare down at him. “Ray,” he said too seriously, “you’d be giving up a great deal more than a bit of hair dye.”

“I know that,” Ray waved away before the look on Fraser’s face could get worse. “You think I don’t know that? Chicago and pizza and any lingering symb--samba-- _semblance_ that I’m 100% straight. I’ve got the better end of the deal by a mile.”

Fraser smiled at him. It was a kind of smile that made Ray’s knees wobbly and he wasn’t even standing up.

“We can get pizza, Ray.”

“I’m talking about,” Ray hurried on before his brain could get derailed by _that,_ “you know, something visible. Like, you’re gonna be Mr. Silver Stud over here and that’s on me—just seems like there should be a way to even the playing field.”

Fraser—who’d gone a little red at the nickname, ha! Ray would make him realize how hot he was ‘all-natural’ if he had to work at it the rest of his life—suddenly looked thoughtful. And then he pulled away.

“Frase?” Ray blurted, not proud of how he tried to cling, but somehow not too embarrassed when Fraser’s response was to turn back and kiss him. Even if it was just a brief peck.

“One moment.” Fraser slid over him with none of his usual grace, and disappeared down the ladder in the flash of an eye.

He only paused when he spotted where Ray had thrown his hat sometime last night—all the way across the room, and Ray refused to feel bad about it—just long enough to send a fond look Ray’s way before he burrowed into his bag. “What are you looking for?” Ray called down, quietly, even though Dief was dead to the world.

“Aha!” Fraser held up his Sam Browne.

“...You want me to wear it?” Ray asked. He...would, probably, (definitely, if Fraser asked him to). But— “Did you bring your whole uniform?”

“Of course not,” Fraser said, slinging the bundle of leather over his shoulder to climb back up. “But I thought it might prove useful if we were ever in a tight spot.”

Ray wanted to ask what kind of tight spot would necessitate a waist-and-shoulder belt, but found he didn’t actually want to know.

Fraser sat close to Ray and dropped the belt on his lap, flipping open a small knife in one hand. Was he going to carve their initials on the inside of the chest strap?

Apparently not. Baffled, Ray watched him cut the thread holding a thin strip of leather around a brass loop that would have rested right over Fraser’s hip. “This is where we attach the sword for full military dress.”

“Uh-huh,” Ray said, somewhat blindly, because—even with one side of the loop bent flat to lie still against the leather—that looked very much like a…

“If you wanted to wear it,” Fraser said, suddenly looking painfully shy.

Ray tangled his fingers with Fraser’s in his haste to reach for the ring, and Fraser laughed even as he almost dropped it, then slid it over Ray’s rough-knuckled ring finger like it was made for exactly this.

“What if you need it back?” Ray asked, wide-eyed and wobbly-voiced and stunned. Stunned in a way that made him terrifyingly aware of how horrible this night could have been if either one of them had taken a fraction less of a chance.

Fraser kissed him. “I know where to find you,” he pointed out, and kissed him again.

“I’ve never been proposed to,” Ray whispered as he pawed at Fraser’s long johns.

“I’ve never done the proposing,” Fraser whispered back, and kissed Ray until the ring warmed up to the heat of Ray’s body, until he could only feel it moving when he stroked through Fraser’s hair.

“Wait a moment,” Fraser said, voice sneaking up into his most indignant squeaky tones. Ray found himself grinning even as he knew that was objectively maybe not-good, especially with Fraser trying to frown at him with his hair going every-which-way. “When you...spoke about the dogs,” Fraser continued, “was—am I Yukon?”

Ray blinked at him. “That is maybe the dumbest thing I have ever heard, and you are the smartest person I know. Of _course_ you’re Yukon! Why would you think you’re Denali? _I’m_ Denali!”

“I thought the ‘home’ you referred to was Chicago,” Fraser huffed, in that way that meant he wasn’t really mad. Embarrassed, maybe, with the way his cheeks were getting pink; but his eyes were crinkling, too.

“The ‘home’ is Canada,” Ray said, rolling his eyes even as Fraser’s went all dark. “Asking if you think an old dog can learn to love a place he’s never been.”

Somewhere in all of that Fraser’s arm snaked around his middle, and he tugged Ray a little closer so he could twine his fingers with the hand wearing Ray’s new hardware. “This metaphor has become quite convoluted, Ray,” he said, in a low, low rumble that sent the good shivers in a ricochet along Ray’s nerve-endings. “And,” he added, close enough to count his lashes in the dark, “I think you can achieve anything you set your mind to.”

“I set my mind to it, Frase,” Ray told him with his whole heart, “I set my mind _to it,_ ” and sealed the promise with a kiss.

Outside he was sure the goddamn northern lights were singing, even as the sun started chasing them through the sky.  


**Author's Note:**

> So. I'm in grad school. This fic, and the fact that I managed to chip away at it until it was in a presentable shape, means a lot to me. Thanks, you guys, for reading. If you want to pimp it out on tumblr, [please feel free. ](http://queenklu.tumblr.com/post/158909504147/hats-heads-fraserrayk)
> 
> Oh, also I promised tombolguid I'd put this deleted scene in the author's notes:
> 
>  
> 
> **“Why are you wearing ten million layers?”**
> 
> **“Well, Ray, it’s zero degrees outside.”**
> 
> **“Yeah what’s that in American?”**
> 
> **“We’re not in America, Ray.”**
> 
> **“You telling me outside only knows what temperature it is in Canadian?"**


End file.
